


The Price of Parenthood

by sarkywoman



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:35:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23087869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarkywoman/pseuds/sarkywoman
Summary: As useful as the money was, Yuliya began to wish she had given the baby away to a kindly family for free.For 'cradling someone in their arms' at bad things happen bingo. One of the biological mothers regrets her bargain with Reginald Hargreeves.
Comments: 15
Kudos: 64
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	The Price of Parenthood

On the twelfth hour on the first day of October nineteen-eighty-nine, forty-three women around the world gave birth. Yuliya was unaware then that her bizarre and terrifying circumstances were duplicated by forty-two others. 

One moment life had been as simple as it ever was. The only real complication was a delightful one in the form of a handsome admirer. Everything else was simply routine struggle. Then her stomach swelled and cramps beset her. She struggled to resurface in the swimming pool, then she was pulled out and surrounded by worried women.

During the agony that followed Yuliya thought of little else. She pushed and pushed with a body that had not been prepared for the strain. It was only after, when the unexpected infant was wrapped in a little blanket and presented to her, that she started to notice the judgement in the eyes of the women around her. 

At first she could barely stand to look at the baby. Its existence made no sense. The swimming coach held the child out to her as though this were a normal birth. As though she ought to be happy. Yuliya did not take the baby from her.

It was hours before she let someone lay it in her shaking arms.

She could not understand what had happened. Her confusion fell mostly upon deaf ears. Even her family agreed with their words but not with their eyes. Everyone thought her reckless. Even her admirer, who had seen her flat belly one moment and her childbirth the next, seemed unsure of how to proceed. Whether to support her or decry her. He settled, over the next couple of days, for maintaining his distance.

Then the man came. The sort of man who did not accept ‘no’ for an answer. A strange man in his own jet, who strode into her home like an explorer looking to plant a flag in territory he did not own.

He offered to buy her child from her arms.

Yuliya looked down at the little burden. The child she had not tried for. The child she had not wanted. 

The man was insistent. Urgent. He acted as though he was purchasing a piece of furniture. But he had money and she had a baby that came from nowhere. 

Not a difficult decision, at the time.

*

Money alleviated some more practical worries, but it didn’t buy respect. Her would-be lover maintained his distance until he became someone else’s. Her family would speak in hushed voices that stopped when she entered the room. She realised that nobody believed her. She wondered often about the little life she had handed away. Remembering the way the man had snatched the mysterious babe from her arms. Would he be gentler with a child?

She didn’t know. She hadn’t asked, paralysed by the strangeness of the circumstances. 

As useful as the money was, Yuliya began to wish she had given the baby away to a kindly family for free.

*

Two years after her… after _the_ child has gone, a woman knocked on Yuliya’s door. She wore make-up and bright floral clothes and looked to be in her late twenties. She pulled a black suitcase on wheels behind her. 

“Hi, I’m Sammy. Yuliya?” English accent.

Yuliya nodded. “Can I help you?”

“I don’t know. Have you ever had a child?”

“No.”

She went to close the door, but the woman got an arm in the way first and stopped it closing. 

“Please, I gave birth on the first day of October nineteen-eighty-nine.”

“Leave,” Yuliya said firmly, though she was unwilling to slam the door on the woman’s arm. It took a moment to understand what she was hearing.

“I wasn’t even pregnant!”

Pulling the door back a little, Yuliya peered through the gap to look the woman in the eye. “You...” She didn’t know what she was going to say and trailed off.

“We’re the same,” Sammy said. “Can I come in? Not for long. I just want to talk. I’m trying to talk to as many as I can.”

“As many what?”

“Mothers. Victims of Immaculate Conception.”

The words hit like a wall of ice. Yuliya let the door open just a little more. “There are others?”

Sammy nodded, her wavy blonde hair bouncing about where it escaped her hat. “I’ve met sixteen.”

“ _Sixteen_...”

Her legs crumpled and she landed hard on her rear, almost knocking the breath out of her lungs. Sammy made a noise of alarm and got into the house, crouching beside her worriedly just as Yuliya’s mother rushed into the hallway and started panicking.

Less than twenty minutes later, Yuliya and Sammy were sat at the kitchen table with mugs of tea, barely sipped, warming their hands. 

“It’s a lot of work,” Sammy was saying, “but finding useful people who love a mystery helps a lot. Michael, that’s the air control chap, has been invaluable when Jonathan, that’s the social care friend, ran out of avenues to explore. You’re actually one of the last on my list. But I know there are more.”

“Why us?” Yuliya asked. “Out of all the women in the world, why us?”

“That’s what I’m hoping to find out.”

“But you have nothing so far.”

Sammy looked taken aback. “I wouldn’t say that. I’ve created a web of all the incidents--”

“You said we were all different. So… that means there are no clues, no?”

“Well… I’m not finished yet,” Sammy said awkwardly. “That’s what science is about, getting enough data to draw conclusions.”

Yuliya sighed. “I did not mean to be rude.”

“Oh no, you’re actually taking this rather well compared to some people I’ve spoken to. There’s been such a range. I nearly got my head taken off by the last lady I spoke to. She gave the baby up even before Mr Reginald reached her and didn’t appreciate my upsetting things. He must have raided adoption centres. Tenacious man.”

His greed had made a permanent impression on Yuliya. She still remembered him as a monster, creeping into her home like Rumpelstiltskin and snatching her child.

She often reframed it to herself that way. She liked to forget the way her arms had lifted, the relief when the babe was taken from her arms. 

“Did you hold your baby?” Yuliya asked.

“Of course,” Sammy said before taking a sip of her tea. “The nurses wouldn’t have it any other way. Baby pops out, wipe it off, drop it in her arms, tell the husband where the cafe is.”

“You’re married? And he was with you?”

“I was _terribly_ lucky. We were visiting his aunt in the hospital. They initially thought it was a tumour when I swelled up. Worst experience of my life. I had my tubes tied afterwards. Jeremy could argue all he wanted, I wasn’t going through that again. You?”

So many questions Sammy asked as if none of this was anything other than a curiosity. As if it had no impact on her life whatsoever. 

“No, I… there were no doctors.”

“None? None at all?”

Whatever look was on Yuliya’s face, it deterred Sammy from following that line of questioning further. 

“Things are different in England, I suppose,” she said instead, taking another sip of tea.

What Yuliya did not answer was that things were different with money, wherever you were.

*

The house in America was not what Yuliya had imagined. She did not know quite what she had imagined. Isolated perhaps, in the countryside, secrets kept far away from prying eyes. Instead it was in a city that she stood nervously with an American-Korean woman called Jung on the steps while Sammy pounded on the door.

“WE ARE HERE TO SEE SIR REGINALD HARGREEVES!” Sammy shouted. “WE WILL NOT BE DETERRED!” She looked to Jung and Yuliya. “Come on, ladies!”

“Let us in!” Yuliya tried, raising her voice slightly.

Judging by the despairing look on Sammy’s face, it was not nearly passionate enough.

If she was being completely honest, Yuliya was regretting this entire adventure. While Sammy had paid for much of it, the expense that had fallen on Yuliya had been almost too much to bear. And for what? 

Jung looked similarly regretful, though she had been the one to contact Sammy with the wretched man’s address. She had invited them to stay with her. Yuliya had accepted the kind offer. Sammy had taken out a nearby hotel room. At eight o’clock that morning she had met them both at a diner for breakfast, then they had made their way to the home of Sir Reginald Hargreeves, billionaire, adventurer and alleged philanthropist.

It was now one o’clock in the afternoon and they had not been so much as answered at the door. Sammy seemed indefatigable. The sun was giving Yuliya a headache. Jung had another child at home and did not want to leave him with her husband indefinitely. 

“YOU STOLE OUR CHILDREN!” Sammy hollered up at the house.

Passers-by looked at them like they were mad. Yuliya saw it, but it made no impact on her. She had been looked at far worse, since the unnatural birth. 

“I bought your children.”

His voice came from above. Jung nearly fell from the steps in shock, but then she pointed up at him accusingly.

“It was no fair trade! We were vulnerable!”

Sir Reginald barely looked any different than he had in Yuliya’s home, though he was dressed more as a gentleman than an explorer this time. Comfortable in his expensive townhouse. Looking down on them like they were insects. 

“Your vulnerability was precisely why I offered such fair terms. All three of you received large sums of money for your situation.”

“For our _children_!” Yuliya corrected.

“Quite so.”

“It’s illegal to buy children,” Yuliya said, hoping that was true. She never studied law but it seemed it should be. 

“By all means call the police,” Reginald said. “But stop your racket at my door. You are scaring the children.”

That was when Yuliya noticed the little face peering through a gap in the curtains in the ground floor window. Big, dark staring eyes. Yuliya stared back.

“Perhaps we _will_ call the police!” Sammy shouts. “And the newspapers!”

“Very well. Good day.”

The man retreated back into his fancy house, leaving them with nothing. Sammy let out a shout of frustration and stomped back down the stairs. 

“We go to the police now?” Jung asked.

Sammy sighed and sagged down into a seated position on the lowest stone step. “I’ve _been_ to the police. In my country and yours. They didn’t want to know.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Yuliya, glancing back at her briefly before resuming her staring match with the pale little girl at the window. 

“Didn’t want to dishearten you,” Sammy said with a bitter little laugh. She pulled a cigarette out and lit it with a match that she then tossed into the street. “For all the good it did.”

“Then we go to the newspapers,” Jung said. “That was a good idea.”

“Oh, I’ve done that too,” Sammy said, blowing smoke into the air. “They never print it. They interview me then it all goes away. That…” She wrinkled her face as if tasting a bad word, “...man! He’s built himself a wall of money. A moat of money. Nothing gets past it.”

“He cannot silence us forever,” Jung said.

“Maybe he can,” Sammy said quietly. She got up and started to walk away. Jung followed with a brief look to Yuliya.

Yuliya waved at the girl at the window. She was cute as a button, but had not smiled once. What was life like behind those curtains? 

When the little girl waved back, Yuliya took her leave and jogged after her friends. Sammy split off from them and went back to her hotel, saying she needed to think. Jung and Yuliya returned to Jung’s home, where she made dinner and cleaned and looked after her son and a million other things Yuliya helped with. She had always assumed these things would be part of her own future, but now she was not so sure. 

If nothing else, at least her adventurous trip had made her a friend. Dining with her little family and laughing, then watching American television together, it was much more fun than she had been having back home. Jung certainly seemed to enjoy her company and the helping hand around the place. 

In the morning, they waited for Sammy at the diner.

She never arrived.

When they checked with her hotel, they found she had left a note. Jeremy was divorcing her. She was going home. She left sufficient money for Yuliya’s return trip home.

But Yuliya kept the money. Again.

*

“How was your walk?” Jung asked when Yuliya returned home to the smell of cooked breakfast.

“I saw them in the yard again. I think he has a strict schedule. They seem to be out there at this time every week.”

Jung sighed as she went to the little coffeepot and poured them both a cup. Yuliya could sense what she was saying without words and got her rebuttal in first.

“Is there any harm in it, really?”

“What if you’re seen? What if Mr Hargreeves does not like you prying?”

“I’ve been spying for over a year now. I think if he was going to notice or take action he would have done so.”

Her friend sighed again and shook her head. She grabbed their plates and they both sat down at the table. Jung’s son, Peter, was with his father that morning so it was just the two of them enjoying a peaceful breakfast. 

“Was the woman there still?” 

“Yes. She looked at me, just like last time.”

“Yuliya, I do not like it. She must be telling her boss.” Jung wrinkled her nose. “...Her husband, maybe.”

Not only was it impossible to imagine a woman wanting to bed Sir Reginald Hargreeves for anything other than money, something about the woman made it impossible to imagine her bedding anyone at all. 

“I’m not sure they are intimate. I think she is just staff.”

“Ha, I imagine that is what Mr Hargreeves tells her afterwards.”

“Oh, Jung!” Yuliya slapped her hand laughingly. “You are so bad. No, I mean that she has a certain poise. Manners.”

“Mannered women are the worst behind closed doors,” Jung pointed out. “I did tell you of the situation my boss’ wife was found in, didn’t I?”

“You did. That poor woman.”

“What are you hoping for?” Jung asked suddenly. “Why do you watch them?”

“The same we have always hoped for,” Yuliya replied. “To hold my child once more.”

“That is not what I hoped for,” Jung said. “I only ever hoped to know my son was safe and well. If I knew that, I would sleep well at night.”

“I think I saw him there, playing with another boy.”

Jung’s smile was strained. “Remember what Sammy said? Thirty-something women bore strange children. Reginald has seven. Who knows what he did to the others? We do not know our children are even among the ones who still live there.”

Squeezing her hand, Yuliya took their empty plates to the sink. She knew her daughter still lived. When the blonde lady saw her peeking over the wall, she had leaned down to say something to the dark-haired girl who stood apart from the rest. The little girl had then looked over, seen Yuliya and waved. The blonde lady had smiled, looking from one to the other with the grace and cheer of someone who had given a well-received gift. 

She had stayed up the wall watching until the children were all summoned back inside.

*

Thanks to Jung, Yuliya had a cleaning job at her office. The route she walked to get there and back every day was far from the quickest option, but it took her past the Hargreeves house. 

They had been on the news a few weeks before. Wearing strange little masks like bank robbers while foiling a bank robbery. All of them in the same little school uniforms. So grown-up, but children still.

Amazing how the years had gone by. Yuliya had so little to show for the time. All she had was Jung’s, really. What she had eventually decided she wanted, to hold the child she had sold – even if it was only once, even if it was only to say sorry – seemed an impossibility. She still only had a sense, a feeling, that her child was among those in Sir Reginald’s house. The little dark-haired girl had not been on the news. Yuliya had managed to record most of it, watching the video over and over looking for her until Jung had insisted she come to bed. 

It was a warm day and Yuliya was sweating from the day’s exertion when she passed the house. Walking on auto-pilot, the scenery familiar from years of passing by, it took her a moment to notice the blonde lady tending to the garden so near the fence. 

Strangely, the woman never seemed to age. She looked up and smiled at Yuliya with red lips, her face the same as it had been for years. “Oh, hello!”

“Hi.” Should she have been embarrassed at being recognised? Her spying had clearly never been forgotten, even though she did it less than she used to.

“Most of the children are inside,” the woman smiled. 

“Oh. That’s okay.” She hadn’t even planned on stopping that day.

The woman stood up straight and removed her dirty gardening gloves. She dressed like a housewife from a television show. Behind the gate and fence was the nearest Yuliya had seen her to leaving the property.

“Vanya?” She called over her shoulder.

A girl came jogging around the side of the house to meet her. “Yes, mother?”

She wore the same little uniform as the masked girl Yuliya had seen on the news. Her hair was so long now. Much straighter than Yuliya’s. 

“This is one of our neighbours,” the woman said pleasantly, indicating Yuliya. “She passes by the house nearly every day. She was enquiring about the delightful violin music she heard the other day.”

A sweet smile appeared on the girl’s face. She took hold of the bars of the fence to lean closer. “I play the violin,” she said proudly. “I’m… not particularly special as a musician, but...”

“I disagree,” Yuliya said. She _had_ heard the instrument within the house on various trips past. “You are very talented. And Vanya is… a beautiful name.”

“Thank you,” the girl replied with a shy little nod. 

“You should run along inside and get ready for dinner now,” the woman said. “Thank you for helping me today.”

“You’re welcome, mother.” Vanya waved at Yuliya then jogged away.

“She’s well cared for?” Yuliya asked as soon as the little girl was out of sight.

“Very much so,” the woman replied. “Sir Reginald Hargreeves is a great man. He has the highest aspirations for the children. They’re all very talented.”

“He is making them into a little army,” Yuliya argued, remembering them stood near him on the television like little soldiers awaiting their next mission. 

“Out of necessity,” the woman said with a bright smile. “The children will save the world.”

There was not a single wrinkle on her face. Not a single hair out of place. Not a drop of sweat despite her gardening in the summer heat.

“They should be allowed to be children,” Yuliya said. “That man is a monster for making them into soldiers. He shouldn’t be allowed to have children.”

“Their parents didn’t feel the same when he offered large sums of money,” the woman said, her smile gone to leave a blank expression.

Yuliya stepped up to the fence and glared up at the woman. “Now you listen to me--”

“Grace!” Reginald Hargreeves snapped out the name from the door, as if the woman were a pet. “Get inside. The children are almost ready to be served dinner, though Number Four may require attention first.”

“Right away,” she said, swanning off without another glance at Yuliya, who stood there with her rage frustrated.

“And you,” Reginald said, scowling down at Yuliya from his place just inside the front door, atop the steps. “You think I do not see you haunting my family home?”

“Those children are not your family.”

“The price I paid was fair.”

“I disagree.”

“Oh?” He tilted his head. “Well, if that is the summation of your discontent... Please, follow me.”

She did. The house was dim inside, the furnishings expensive enough that Yuliya felt conspicuous in her cleaning uniform as she followed the man. Reginald walked with a cane these days, but quickly enough that she trailed behind.

Halfway across the grand foyer, a boy materialised in front of them, making her scream. He scowled at her with a look reminiscent of his ‘father’ before turning to Sir Reginald. “Pogo said to inform you that Number Two is refusing to leave Klau-- Number Four in the medical room and as such may be late to dinner without your intervention.”

“Thank you for your message, Number Five. You may prepare for dinner.”

The boy said nothing but disappeared again. Yuliya looked around for a few moments, expecting him to reappear. He did not. She followed Reginald’s hobbling form up the stairs. Even his walk was aggressive. He used the cane as if he would knock a child aside with it if they crossed his path.

“You call them by number.”

“Indeed.”

“Don’t they have names? I thought they did.”

Reginald let out a sound that may have been a scoff. The closest the man likely got to amusement. “Toys their mother gave them. They will grow bored of them, as all children do. Number Five, at least, knows his place in the future.”

He led her down a hallway to his office. Yuliya heard conversation from somewhere and moments later a boy and girl emerged from the room at the end. They stopped, startled to see her. She was equally startled – the boy’s face was so much like Sammy’s that even though she had not seen the woman in years the resemblence struck her.

“Number One!” Reginald barked. “And Number Three! Both of you cease dawdling and prepare for dinner!”

“Yes father,” they said meekly before scurrying past him and Yuliya. The girl looked back to her curiously from the top of the stairs before Yuliya went into Reginald’s office. 

By the time she sat down he was seated and scribbling. It looked like… a cheque.

The little paper was slid over to her a moment later. “Tell me,” Reginald commanded, “is that price fairer? For the sake of letting me save the world?”

Yuliya thought of the babe wailing in her arms so long ago. Of the pale girl with the dark hair who played the violin and called such a strange woman ‘mother’. 

On the little paper, a number forced itself on her eyeballs. She thought of Jung’s boy – not the one here that Yuliya swore was hers – but the cocky and bright boy approaching high school with the world at his feet but not a cent, because his father so despised Yuliya’s place in his wife’s heart. She thought of the broken tap causing damp in the kitchen wall, that they could not afford to fix. 

“Well?” Reginald asked, as impatient as though she had another babe in her arms for sale. “Is it enough?”

“No.”

It wasn’t sentiment making her say the word. She wished that it was. She said it to see his brow furrow, knowing that he would – and he did – snatch back the paper, rip it up then write another.

“What about this?”

“That--”

“On the condition,” he interrupted, “that you no longer haunt this property. I have been most tolerant of your trespasses, but this must put an end to them. I will not have you alarm the children.”

“I...” She could barely speak for offence. “ _I_ alarm the children? With all that you put them through?”

“Confuse them, then,” Reginald said. “They already have a mother here.”

“The little violinist, Vanya. She is my daughter?”

“Number Seven is the least impressive of my children. That she utilises some of your genetic material should not make you proud.”

“You are a monster,” Yuliya whispered without hesitation. 

“Nevertheless.” He tapped the new cheque. “Does this suffice to keep you from my door?”

Who was more a monster? The one who bought souls or the wretches who sold them?

“Yes.”

She did not see any of the children on her way back out of the house, though she was startled at the sight of a monkey in a suit reading a book. He did not see her as she raced out of the house.

The cheque felt like fire folded in her pocket, burning through the thick material of her uniform and burning her chest. 

When the violin music began to play she turned to see the little girl at the window. Over the violin, the girl looked at her and smiled, ignorant of the devil’s deal that had just been made.

Tears spilled from Yuliya’s eyes and she was forced to flee before the girl saw them.

*

Over the years, Yuliya had taken a leaf out of Sammy’s book. She made useful friends, spoke to everyone that she could in order to find out more about everything. She was known as a bit of a gossip, though she rarely passed information onto others. But she was known as personable, friendly. So it was that when her cop friend Darren told her a story over a beer, he thought he was sharing a curious tale that would intrigue and entertain her.

Instead she had been so upset she wondered now if he would ever tell her anything again. Afterwards she sat at home, unable to sleep but unwilling to wake Jung, who seemed to have gone for an early night. 

The woman found Yuliya in the kitchen later, staring into a mug of tea that had long since cooled. Jung pulled a chair over and sat down beside her at the spacious kitchen table. Hargreeves money had paid for a comfortable home, but the weight of everything else it had bought weighed heavily on Yuliya’s heart that evening.

“What’s wrong?” Jung asked. 

“Darren was called over to the house a week ago.”

There was no need to say what house. Jung sighed without it being specified. “You _have_ to let it go. You were paid to let it go. We can’t worry about--”

“Your boy is dead.”

Jung gasped as if struck. Then, after a moment of frozen shock, she shook her head. Dark hair tumbled down, caressed her cheeks and hid her eyes from Yuliya’s sight. 

“I’m sorry.” Yuliya took her hand where it rested on the table.

With her free hand, Jung stroked her hair back from her face. That moment’s hiding seemed to be all she had needed to regain her composure. She smiled, though Yuliya did not think her heart was in it.

“My love, of course it is… a horrible thing if a boy is dead. But _my_ boy is here, in the other room. Asleep.”

“You know I mean the other son,” Yuliya said. “The one Hargreeves called Number Six and the woman called Ben.”

“Poor thing,” Jung said. The emotion was sincere, but held at a distance. It was sadness at the concept of loss, not grief for a personal loss. 

“First he _loses_ one, mistreats my girl, now he’s--”

“His girl, Yuliya. He paid you handsomely that she be his girl.”

Yuliya could not hold in her annoyance and it burst out of her throat in an angry little noise. She let go of Jung’s hand. “There is no amount of money in this world that can buy a daughter.”

“That is not what you said when you took the payment,” Jung reminded her. “Two payments. 

“He is _killing_ our children!”

“They are not our children!” Jung shouted. “You have to stop. You have to let them go. Let Reginald Hargreeves raise his purchased children how he sees fit. You sold your responsibility to him many, many years ago.”

“Mom? Everything okay?”

They both looked to the doorway where Jung’s teenage son looked worried. Jung smiled. “We’re fine, baby. Go back to sleep.”

He looked between them and nodded, slinking off back to his bedroom. 

“That’s my son,” Jung said. “I don’t know what happened to the other child I held in my arms all those years ago. I don’t even know if it was the same child that has died, or if my baby died long before last week. We don’t _know_ , Yuliya. All these years and we honestly do not know. So please, join me in the life we have made here, stop obsessing over the one you sold.”

She allowed herself to seem swayed and joined her partner in their bed. 

But as Jung slept, Yuliya lay awake. She knew. From what Hargreeves had told her, she knew her daughter was locked up in that house. When she had sold her, the guilt had been left in her place as a fetch. It had made no noise in its weak youth, but it had grown year after year. Now in its adolescence, it shrieked at her and gave her no peace. She was raising Guilt as her child in Vanya’s stead.

*

The little bookstore was crowded. It was not luck that secured Yuliya her seat, but a long wait. She had struggled to find the space between getting there conspicuously early and getting there too late to sit down. She had chosen a seat down the side. She would have a good view of the speaker but wouldn’t be too noticeable herself. 

It was good to see the room full. Yuliya had read the book three times already and it deserved such a rapt audience. Finally, the truth of Sir Reginald Hargreeves in print. She had sent a copy to Jung, but it had been returned as undelivered. 

It had been a gripping read. From the brainwashing of Sammy’s boy Luther to the envy of his second, Diego. The manipulations of famous Allison and the self-destruction of tragic Klaus, both of whom Yuliya had followed in the media whenever possible. The disappearance of the one without a name and the awful _awful_ death of Ben, whose mother did not even acknowledge him.

And Vanya. Left alone so often. Made to feel unspecial. Unwanted. Bought for such a high price to gather dust in a mad old man’s house. 

Now she sat in front of a room of people with a small smile and told her story. People listened. To Yuliya it was as beautiful as one of her violin pieces. She was so proud of her brave girl.

At the end, Yuliya queued to have her book signed. She didn’t know why or what she was hoping for. An embrace, perhaps. A chance for the babe to return to the arms that had handed her away.

A couple of the books lay open on the table as she queued. Yuliya glanced at the familiar paragraphs. 

_Unwanted before I can even remember. I don’t know what Sir Reginald did to obtain me..._

_...childhood torn away from us forever, kept as would-be soldiers. Except for me, of course. For all that we were broken in similar ways by that house, I was considered even more defective than that. Who allows children to be raised that way?_

She had, Yuliya realised. She had allowed her child to be raised that way. Sold her. 

Upon reaching the front of the line, her throat felt tight. She managed to say her name. Vanya signed her book and thanked her for coming. There was no sign that she recognised Yuliya under her grey hair and wrinkles. 

Why would there be?

Vanya had never known her mother. 

*

Reginald’s money lasted longer than he did, which Yuliya took some satisfaction in. She used it to attend Vanya’s shows. The young woman played so beautifully, but she never took the lead. Even as an adult, she sat in the shadows rather than recognising her own worth.

Yuliya wanted so badly to believe she could do something to fix that. But what? An aging woman with a small apartment stepping forward to say she was her long-lost mother, that she hadn’t wanted to let her go but… she had. 

Sometimes she considered lying, saying that Reginald had stolen her by force. But she couldn’t lie to the girl. She had done enough. 

So instead she paid to watch her play. She cut out little newspaper clippings of the shows she would be in, just as she had cut out little clippings of the Umbrella Academy back in the day. She had five large folders of clippings. One of the few things she had taken with her when she moved out of Jung’s home. 

Looking over the older pages, she thought again about Hargreeves’ claim that his super children would save the world. What an old fool. He had raised children who couldn’t even save themselves.

Vanya’s first show as first chair also seemed to be her last. Yuliya did not run when the rest of the audience did, though she hid beneath the chairs when gunfire broke out. She peered between them to see her girl resplendent in white, playing a song fit for the end of the world.

Their eyes met. Yuliya could do nothing but smile. The tearful smile of a proud mother at her baby’s recital. Vanya’s gaze lingered on her, but not forever. She had her beautiful music to concentrate on.

When her sister brought the gun to Vanya’s head, Yuliya cried out but went unheard.

But they caught Vanya when she fell. Sammy’s boy picked her up in his large arms and Allison, though she had fired the gun, fussed over Vanya’s unconscious form as any sister should. They grouped together, this band of broken bought children. They held Vanya close and treasured her as they disappeared. 

Yuliya wrapped her arms around herself as the end approached and congratulated her daughter on being worth every penny of Reginald Hargreeves’ damned money.


End file.
